Category Archives: Political Correctness

Its the biggest unforced error of the week and in this political climate, thats saying a lot.

ESPN became a laughingstock Wednesday for pulling veteran announcer Robert Lee off a University of Virginia football game because his name is too close to Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general dead for nearly 150 years.

We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, ESPN said, simply because of the coincidence of his name.

Simply because of the coincidence of his name. This is the height of C-suite media condescension, though its unclear whos being condescended to: Is it red-state Trump voters? Does the network regard them as lumpen, half-wit knuckle-draggers who might take Lees presence as a tacit endorsement of white supremacy? Or is it the coastal, liberal elite that the network regards as babyish, too hyper-attuned to triggers and identity politics, ready to take offense at the inoffensive?

What if Robert went by Bob?

Within hours of ESPNs announcement, their Robert Lee was trending on Twitter. Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen weighed in. If this isnt the same Lee that led the Confederate Army, he tweeted, ESPN needs to reverse this idiocy.

Lee is Asian-American. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has extensive experience in both business and broadcasting. He graduated Syracuse University in 1999 with a B.S. in broadcast journalism. His most recent location is Albany. He speaks Mandarin. He describes himself as a team player . . . who meshes well with coworkers, customers and clients.

This is hardly the stuff of controversy. The networks overreaction only reminds us of its sad downward spiral: the bloodbath of over 100 employees fired in April; the flight of 10 million subscribers since 2011; the belief among liberal viewers that ESPN panders to conservatives and the belief among conservatives that ESPN is too liberal.

In trying to offend no one, theyve offended just about everyone. The networks tone-deafness extends to their statement. Its a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play-by-play for a football game has become an issue.

Earlier this week, the Twitter account for the American Civil Liberties Union posted an innocuous picture of a toddler wearing a tyke-sized ACLU T-shirt with the words Free Speech on the front. The little one was holding a stuffed animal in one hand and a mini American flag in the other. The tweet that accompanied the photo said This is the future that ACLU members want.

Within moments, the tweet was descended upon from the corners of the outrage twitter-sphere because thats what social media is now. The great social injustice committed here by the ACLU? The child in the picture was white and therefore declared as racist and propping up white supremacists. Senior Guardian columnist Steven Thrasher posted a humorous gif of Blackish star Anthony Anderson crying while others took it a bit more seriously.

But other than a handful of verified twitter users, there wasnt really a catch-fire moment. It wasnt picked up by media outlets or journalists on Twitter. There was a minor firestorm over a picture that attracted scant attention but in the end that didnt matter.

Within the hour, however, the ACLU posted a weird retraction of the image, stating When your Twitter followers keep you in check and remind you that white supremacy is everywhere, along with a Kermit the Frog gif.

If the ACLU cant even defend their own words on their own Twitter account, how are they supposed to defend anyone elses?

The issue here shouldnt necessarily be that the ACLU apologized for a picture they posted of a child wearing their own Free Speech merchandise and calling it white supremacy. It should be how quickly they were willing to placate a mob without any real influence. Other than a couple people with verified twitter accounts, this really wasnt an issue. But of course now it is.

When viewed through a larger lens, its a troubling pattern in the wake of the Charlottesville protests, where the ACLU has found itself walking a delicate line of speaking out for the rights of speech (everyones speech, yes, including idiot Nazi role players) while not being accused of being white supremacists themselves and/or finding themselves on the receiving end of a trademarked bottle of Antifa-brand urine bomb.

When the ACLU spoke out in defense of the rights of white supremacists, there was a collective meltdown, much, much larger than simply posting a picture of a cute little kid with a flag. The New York Times even ran an editorial by K. Sue Park saying, By insisting on a narrow reading of the First Amendment, the organization provides free legal support to hate-based causes. The title of the piece was The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech.

Being publicly chastised by our elite betters seemed to be enough in that case. The ACLU appeased the mob by telling The Wall Street Journal that they will no longer defend hate groups protesting with firearms. Several men and women in Charlottesville were seen claiming to be a part of some kind of weekend militias and open-carrying firearms as a way of acting like a self-appointed police force. It should also be noted that after the ACLU made this declaration, members of Antifa outside the memorial service for Heather Heyer were seen carrying rifles.

But this is the corner the ACLU has now backed itself into, apologizing to random mobs of anonymous twitter accounts. The ACLU cant explain what is racist about the photo of the baby with the flag they posted. Instead they felt the need to clarify that its simply babies in onesies and directed followers to the official Instagram account where they not only feature babies in onesies, but support of protestors for Black Lives Matter and Chelsea Manning.

The image clearly was not meant to represent White Supremacy but that didnt matter. This is a time when the professional and political left is calling into the question the value of free speech and beginning to dip their toes into rationalizing limits that we, as a politically correct society, should put on speech.

Its not the job of the ACLU to apologize for its defense of speech. Its not their job to placate a random twitter mob that finds their stances problematic. Its their job to defend the speech rights and civil liberties of all Americans. If they cant even defend their own words on their own Twitter account, how are they supposed to defend anyone elses?

Stephen L. Miller has written for Heat Street and National Review Online. Follow him on Twitter at @redsteeze.

The conversation happening in our nation in light of recent events is more about political correctness than the issue at hand. Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and terrorists are bad people. The ideals of these groups are in opposition to everything our nation stands for and everything that holds true to our founding principles. Their hatred of people dissimilar to them is un-American and it should not be tolerated under any circumstances.

Days ago, my colleague in the Senate, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, announced that he plans to introduce legislation that would remove all of the statues in the U.S. Capitol that honored Confederate soldiers. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has also called for the elimination of such statues. I respect their rights as elected officials to put forth legislation they believe is in the best interest of their constituents, however I simply do not agree.

As a Cherokee, I can attest to the fact that Native Americans have been on the losing side of history. Our rights have been infringed upon, our treaties have been broken, our culture has been stolen, and our tribes have been decimated at the hands of our own United States government. Native Americans have faced centuries of atrocities to their people, their land, and their culture all under various presidents who took an oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

When we censor our history by disguising our scars, we belittle the struggles our ancestors fought so hard to overcome. America doesn’t cower behind political correctness. It defiantly and courageously moves forward, with its history as a reminder of where we have been.

Under President Andrew Jackson in 1830, our government passed the Indian Removal Act that drove thousands of Native Americans out of their homes on the treacherous journey better known as the Trail of Tears. Under President Franklin Pierce in 1854, parts of Indian Territory were stolen from tribes to create the Kansas and Nebraska Territories. Under President Abraham Lincoln, the Sand Creek massacre occurred in 1864 when the U.S. Army attacked the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes unprovoked, killing about 250 Native Americans. The Dawes Act of 1887 gave President Grover Cleveland the power to take back tribal land and redistribute the land to native people as individuals, not as tribal members. Under President Benjamin Harrison in 1890, the Wounded Knee massacre took the lives of 150 Native Americans. Under President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907, Indian and Oklahoma territories were unified to create the state of Oklahoma after Congress refused to consider a petition to make Indian Territory a separate state. President Roosevelt is even quoted as saying: I dont go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are.

Let me ask you this: Is history not an opportunity to learn from ones mistakes? When we fall short of the high standard we set for our nation and its citizens, we make mistakes. What’s most important is that our nation remembers and learns from them. As soon as we forget about our history, we are bound to repeat the same errors.

Still, we have professional athletes like Colin Kaepernick who refuse to stand during the national anthem and others who stand in solidarity with him in protest of the United States. To what end? To protest this country, a country that I love and my friends have died to defend? As an American, you have the right to protest me, or another individual, or a group, but I believe that protesting the United States for the mistakes it has made when it gave you the freedom to do so in the first place is disrespectful. Any attempt to coerce the United States into erasing our history is disingenuous. Especially, when our country has learned from the mistakes it has made and is determined not to repeat them.

Should we erase our history in the name of being politically correct? Can we not all agree that it is what shaped our country to be the great nation it is today? One that we know to be full of freedoms, liberties, and rights that other nations only dream of?

The removal of Confederate statues in the U.S. Capitol doesnt change our history. The removal of these statues merely attempts to disguise our ugly scars by hiding these statues out of plain sight. In an imperfect world, full of imperfect leaders, there are countless statues that may not live up to our American values. The statues of President Jackson and President Lincoln, both fervent oppressors of Native Americans, stand tall in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Still, these statues tell the history of the good and the bad of our nation.

America is and will always be a success story. We have African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and members of other ethnic groups elected to positions inside our governments. The American free enterprise system is the greatest tool to lift people out of poverty ever created in human history and when applied properly, does not discriminate by race, religion, or skin color. When we censor our history by disguising our scars, we belittle this process and the struggles our ancestors fought so hard to overcome. America doesn’t cower behind political correctness. It defiantly and courageously moves forward, with its history as a reminder of where we have been. Let us look boldly into our history and learn the lessons that made us the shining city on the hill and the example for all other peoples.

Someday they might not treat me fairly and I will tell you about it. Okay? But they’ve treated me fairly. And I don’t mean all good, I got plenty of bad on Fox too. But at least it’s within reason. And “Hannity,” how good is “Hannity”?

And he’s a great guy. And he is an honest guy. And “Fox & Friends” in the morning is the best show. And it’s the absolute most honest show. And it’s a show I watch.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUTFELD: “Fox & Friends.” A poor man’s “Five.”

(LAUGHTER)

BRIAN KILMEADE, GUEST CO-HOST: We were here first. We were the Neil Armstrong of television.

GUTFELD: No. No. Your days are numbered, your days are numbered.

KILMEADE: You were in high school when we started.

GUTFELD: I know.

Anyway, you got to admit that is awesome trolling: Plugging FNC on CNN. That is like ordering a Coke at the Pepsi factory.

Now, by now we know Trump’s spiel: The media makes a big deal out of nothing. It craps a redwood from an acorn. But just before his rally, ESPN proved him right. They fooled a reporter from the UVA game because his name was Robert Lee. Yes. It sounded too close to Sara Lee and their pound cake goes straight your hips. Actually, they were worried his name might cause teasing because of the fuss over statues. How sad: Protecting a grown man from jokes. Is ESPN still a sports network? What is the sport, patty cake? Talk about hysteria. And it supports Trump’s media analysis: When you react preemptively over a cowardly fear of something that doesn’t exist, you are broken.

And the media thinks Trump is unstable? ESPN is trapped in a mirage were all things are viewed irrationally because the poor saps are held hostage to fear. Note: They are not literally held hostage, just a figure of speech.

So, what’s next, ESPN? Ban words like monumental or statuesque? What about players name Jefferson or Davis? But really, the story is a healthy sign: Once exposed, everyone did laugh at it. But it leads me to one question: Does ESPN still cover sports or just their asses?

KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, CO-HOST: Oh my gosh!

GUTFELD: Kilmeade. Donald Trump gushing about “Fox & Friends.” When you heard him do that, did you high five yourself in the mirror of your lonely sad hotel room?

KILMEADE: It’s bit of a surreal experience. The President of the United States in front of the capacity crowd in Phoenix — I expect that it was — I fully expect my mom to do that.

GUTFELD: Yes.

KILMEADE: Because she does like “Fox & Friends” and she has got a lot of choices. She controls the channel. I don’t know why because she even has movie channels. But I do say this.

(LAUGHTER)

KILMEADE: But that’s what Donald Trump is. He is absolutely transparent in that he watched George Stephanopoulos give an interview after an Afghanistan policy about a war we are fighting and trying to win. He got one question out and it was back to eight days later. George Stephanopoulos. How do I hurt his feelings? Attack his height. So, what else do I have in my mind, I start the day with “Fox & Friends” and I like those guys.

GUTFELD: Yes.

KILMEADE: So, I just know Donald Trump as being somebody who speaks the truth, who agrees with my mom.

GUTFELD: I could never be president. I could never say how I start my day.

(LAUGHTER)

GUILFOYLE: So, gross.

GUTFELD: You don’t know what that means!

GUILFOYLE: Oh, I do.

GUTFELD: So, Juan, should the NFL continue using Dixie cups on the sidelines?

JUAN WILLIAMS, CO-HOST: Dixie cups. Yes, that’s a good question. That is about the equivalent in your mind.

GUTFELD: Yes.

WILLIAMS: That is how serious you think this is.

GUILFOYLE: Yes. Hard-hitting news here.

GUTFELD: What do you make of my connection between ESPN and Trump? That ESPN somehow proved them right but they’re kind of like a radical thinking. Yes.

WILLIAMS: No. I don’t think they proved him right but I think it was, you know, right before this speech and I think the conservative echo chamber exploded. I mean, you brought it up here.

GUTFELD: I’m part of the echo chamber, America.

KILMEADE: You thought ESPN was out of control —

WILLIAMS: No, no. I think it’s an absurd and crazy decision. On the face of it, now there’s a statement out from ESPN, which they said, it had nothing to do with anybody being offended by Robert Lee announcing the Virginia game. That in fact, it was about whether or not there would be means and hectoring and —

GUTFELD: They’re worried about teasing.

WILLIAMS: Yes. Teasing Robert Lee and that Robert Lee was going to be —

GUILFOYLE: And heckling, yes.

KILMEADE: By the way — ESPN, I might have to work there.

GUTFELD: Yes. Great move.

GUILFOYLE: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

WILLIAMS: Who knows?

GUILFOYLE: The way the fortune-teller is talking over here. Oh my goodness!

GUTFELD: Yes. I’ve got my eyes on your seat. Kimberly, you buy — Juan buys the excuse that they were protecting him from being teased.

GUILFOYLE: Uh-hm.

GUTFELD: It’s kind of odd. I mean, would anybody protect you as an announcer?

GUILFOYLE: Has anyone ever protected me? No! Are you kidding me? I’m like the dark board, I’m like the local, you know, deadliest catch bar. Anyway, no. What I think though is, they were protecting themselves. They are not protecting Robert Lee. They want to act like they are altruistic, and we’re just looking out for this guy and trying to protect their employee. I don’t think that’s the case.

I think they’re worried that if they were going to face criticism, and it was going to be another sad round of publicity for them. But opps, that actually happened anyway because of the way they had it. And then all day long, you saw everyone was putting up a picture of Robert Lee, such a nice guy. Poor thing. And, you know, it is on and on. And now people are making fun of ESPN and saying, they have kind of no compass. Their compass is whether or not it might be bad press for them. Not about what the right thing to do is.

KILMEADE: Right. But what about the most famous sportscaster who’s been there since day one, his name is Bob Lee, why did he escape? Why would they try to protect him from a meme?

GUILFOYLE: I will go by the short nickname like not the full —

GUTFELD: I just hate it when cable network gets bad controversy. Hey, Dana, doesn’t this story reveal the difference between the perception of possible outrage and real outrage?

DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: Yes.

GUTFELD: And I think we operate the media by possible outrage, we are constantly worried about what we are going to say.

PERINO: I self-edit.

GUTFELD: Yes. You have a filthy mind. You know?

PERINO: I actually do think that — I think that they were over thinking it.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PERINO: And I think they made a terrible decision and I was the first to say this was the most ridiculous story.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PERINO: But, I think that they probably were, when they got around the — they probably have consultants who called in, like charging them a lot of money to sit around and say, we should really try to protect him.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PERINO: Because he is going to be the subject of all of these insults on Twitter. I can actually buy that. I don’t think they were necessarily happened here. I think that they went way overboard. Because every action causes this overreaction in a situation. But Megan McArdle at Bloomberg, she wrote a piece today saying that we are all afraid of the online mob.

GUTFELD: Uh-hm.

PERINO: So that you’re making decisions and editing yourself before you can even get anything out because you are afraid of the social media backlash. Actually, if you turn it off, it doesn’t exist.

GUTFELD: No, it’s like a cloudy day if you just look away. You don’t see the clouds.

KILMEADE: Do you want to know how I do it? You have a pan handy? Do you want to try this?

GUTFELD: Yes.

KILMEADE: Okay. What I do is I forget my password. So, I don’t log on. I have no idea what —

PERINO: Your password is not “password?”

GUTFELD: It’s true. I know what it is, it’s “I heart Lucy.”

(LAUGHTER)

KILMEADE: We are not really sure. It would be more likely to be Ainsley. So, put it that way. I can’t give away my password. But actually, I am not bothered by things I don’t know.

GUTFELD: Yes.

KILMEADE: So, I love the line —

PERINO: This is actually the next step.

KILMEADE: I have no idea what’s going on.

PERINO: I think people are going to start walking away. At least from the twitter side of this.

GUILFOYLE: Yes.

PERINO: Because there is not enough room for context. I re-tweeted something that Mike Rowe wrote today on Facebook and response to somebody who called a white nationalist.

GUTFELD: Uh-hm.

PERINO: And his response is so thoughtful. But it takes a lot longer for him to explain it so he does it on Facebook. I thought Tucker Carlson tonight, he said that he basically took Twitter off of all of his devices. And this is actually the next step in all of this which is, just walk away. Walk away from it.

WILLIAMS: Backlash. Backlash.

GUTFELD: Two sets of people. And I would include Juan in this, are happier people. You don’t read your ad mentions on Twitter. I don’t see you ever looking at anything.

Only the SPLC and friends have human rights in America today.By Allan Erickson on August 24, 2017 at 9:41am

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George and Amal Clooney donate $1 million to fight hate groups.

The headline should read Clooneys give $1 million to support a hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Clooneys are no doubt good folks, well-intentioned, rightly motivated, but deceived. Once a praiseworthy leader in the fight against the KKK, the SPLC now burns crosses in its own way.

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With this donation, the Clooneys join Amazon and J.P. Morgan Chase in shoveling many millions of dollars to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization now actively engaged in attacking and seeking to destroy traditional Christian organizations and designating them as hate groups, which results in violence and death threats.

Do you recall theattack on the Family Research Councilin 2012? Domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins confessed he targeted the Family Research Council because it was cited on the Hate Map of the Southern Poverty Law Center website. Corkins got 25 years for using a firearm to attack FRC staff in their Washington, D.C., offices. He wounded a security guard.

According to National Review, The Southern Poverty Law Center, the civil rights watchdog group that ABC and NBC so prominently cite, has become a dangerous joke. Its a joke because the very idea that Christians are members of a hate group merely because they advocate for orthodox Christian principles and the liberty to live those principles is so intellectually and ideologically bankrupt that its barely worth addressing.

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The SPLC designates Liberty Counsel a hate group because LC advocates biblical marriage, engaging in the debate concerning homosexuality and same-sex marriage. But for the SPLC, free speech, religious freedom and exercising freedom of conscience are dog whistles for hate.

Among other groups condemned by the SPLC, traditional conservative groups having nothing to do with hate, racism, violence, fascism or discrimination:

Various Catholic and Jewish organizations are also condemned as hate groups. It appears the SPLC employs a conveniently simplistic methodology for identifying and then persecuting so-called hate groups: Anyone holding to traditional moral values such as heterosexual, monogamous marriage is immediately tagged; anyone warning of the dangers of sharia and jihad is automatically a hater; anyone concerned about preserving the Constitution and defending God-given rights is condemned; those holding to traditional Christian values are targeted, along with all pro-lifers, everyone in favor of strong national security and all people opposed to illegal immigration. All Trump supporters are haters, dont you know?

In other words, unless you toe the line according to what the SPLC dictates concerning positions on controversial topics of the day, you are targeted for destruction, which means you are sued, silenced and threatened. Only the SPLC and friends have human rights in America today.

Thanks to the hate group designation published by the SPLC, Liberty Counsel has receiveddeath threats.

Apparently all this has little influence on George Clooney, or perhaps he just doesnt know about the dark soul of the SPLC.

What happened in Charlottesville, and what is happening in communities across our country, demands our collective engagement to stand up to hate, said Clooney, explaining his motivation to make the SPLC donation.

We agree, George. However, one does not douse the fire by pouring on gasoline or by turning on the good guys. Lets stand up to the real haters, not just Nazis and white supremacists. Lets include antifa, BLM, jihad, communists, anarchists and all enemies of liberty and justice for all, including the SPLC. Youd be wise to ask for a refund, George.

How ironic: seeing the Klan pass the torch to the SPLC.

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website.

Time.comBack at the 2015 event at which Donald Trump announced his bid for the presidency, his daughter Ivanka introduced her father as, first and foremost, an implacable foe of political correctness. “My father is the opposite of politically correct. He says what he means and he means what he says,” she said, shortly before Trump characterized Mexican immigrants as disease-ridden, drug-smuggling rapists (“Some, I assume, are good people,” he granted). In the first Republican primary debate, held in August of 2015, Trump himself reiterated that being anti-P.C. would be the hallmark of his political life, declaring, “I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness.”

It’s ironic, then, that perhaps Trump’s greatest accomplishment so far as president is to make it OKor maybe even mandatoryfor his followers to engage in the worst excesses of political correctness, especially its attempts to shut down debate and heterodox opinions through bullying, appeals to ad hominem attacks, and unthinking “whataboutism.”

Among the Trump faithful, there are never legitimate grounds upon which to disagree with anything the billionaire says or does. If Barack Obama’s most strident defenders were sometimes quick to claim any criticism of him was racist, thereby delegitimating honest disagreement, Trump’s supporters are equally quick to denounce any dissent as proof positive of secret membership in Antifa, a pro-Hillary voting record, or a desperate attempt to look good among the communists who run the much-discussed-yet-little-seen Washington, D.C. cocktail party circuit.

And thus it has come to pass that the president of these United States, who hates political correctness at his very core, didn’t “frankly have time” to immediately and unambiguously denounce by name violent right-wing protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia who last week carried torches and Nazi flags (complete with swastikas) around town while chanting “Jews will not replace us” and the Hitlerian slogan of “blood and soil.” Sure, Trump had time to talk to the public. But even after a car ran into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring 19 others, the president only issued a statement vaguely condemning “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.” Reportedly pushed by advisers, including his daughter Ivanka, he eventually called out the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists specifically and boldly averred that “racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs.” Within a few hours of delivering those remarks to generally poor reviews, even among his fellow Republicans and conservatives, the president whined via Twitter that “once again the #Fake News Media will never be satisfied…truly bad people!”

But the president wasn’t finished with disquisitions on Charlottesville. He called a press conference on August 15 at which he rendered his second, explicitly anti-Nazi statement inoperative by stressing the presence and violence of left-wing protesters, the bias of the media, and the pressing need to preserve statues commemorating Confederate war heroes (a cause that was not mentioned in the posters recruiting protesters for the Unite the Right rally).

IMGFLIP.comAs Allahpundit of the conservative site Hot Air summarized:

Short of [Trump] overtly endorsing the alt-right, which he can’t do (I think?), I don’t know what more he could have said here to make them happy. He stressed that not everyone who was at the demonstration in front of the Robert E. Lee statue on Friday night was a white nationalist, that some perfectly decent people were part of the group. This group? The one carrying torches and chanting things like “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us”?

Trump’s last comments on the matter drew praise from former KKK leader David Duke, who tweeted “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa,” and ethno-nationalist Richard Spencer, who texted The Atlantic’s Rosie Gray to gush, “Really proud of him.”

Is it politically correct to expect the president of the United States to unequivocally denounce the racial theories and violence of neo-Nazis and white supremacists? For Donald Trump and his supporters, the answer is unambiguously yes and so even libertarian critics of the president who are unsurpassed in their contempt for collectivist racial theories and their defense of free speech (something Trump himself is not so good on) must be attacked for calling out Nazis as stupid, bigoted, and, well, definitionally un-American (didn’t we fight a war against Nazism?). Don’t you understand, Trump’s supporters insist, that we need to fight progressives with the same tactics they use? If you hold him to basic standards of decency, competence, or comportment, they continue, you’re as bad as the left (typically defined as libertarian-leaning Republican Sen. Jeff Flake and anyone to his left).

That sort of thinking may keep Trump happy and insulated in the Oval Office and his fans energized and ill-tempered online, but it also means there will over time be fewer and fewer of them. In fact, Trump’s approval ratings, never good to begin with, continue to set negative records. According to Marist, just 35 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing and his support among Republicans has dropped 12 percentage points since June, to a new low of 79 percent. It seems unlikely that Republicans, who voted overwhelmingly for him, would be bamboozled by media bias, doesn’t it? Perhaps Trump’s falling approval rating has less to do with President Obama, the press, or the supposed power of Black Lives Matter to somehow cloud our minds and more to do with his inability to get much of anything done, to turn around the economy (the recent claim that he created an “unprecedented” number of jobs in the first six months of his presidency is flatly wrong), or to speak bluntly and honestly to the American people. On that last score, a recent poll for CNN found that just “36% of respondents said Trump was honest and trustworthy, while 60% answered that the description ‘does not apply.'”

Yeah, yeah, I hear you already, Trump’s P.C. loyalists: CNN is biased, what about all the people killed by Black Lives Matter at its rallies (zero, in truth), your gal HILLARY CLINTON would have been worse, why aren’t you condemning Antifa and left-wing violence (been there, done that, and will continue to do so)!?!?

You are playing not a dangerous game so much as a losing one (as Trump’s adviser Steve Bannon says, the alt-right is filled with “losers” and “clowns”). “The Left” is hardly ascendant in American life, especially if you use the imprecise measure of the number of Democrats who hold office in the United States; certainly Democrats in Congress aren’t the reason why the GOP and the president can’t produce balanced budgets, entitlement reform, or market-oriented health-care legislation. (Of course, from a libertarian viewpoint, we’ve got plenty of statists around, but they hail from all points on the conventional political spectrum, and that’s a different argument altogether.)

Confidence in major American institutions (including the presidency and Congress, held by the GOP) are at or near historic lows and Trump’s brain farts on Twitter and at press conferences aren’t the tonic needed to change any of that. You’re forgetting that most Americans actively despise left-wing political correctness for all the ways that it chokes off even the possibility of meaningful debate about all sorts of issues that matter to us all. Far from wanting a right-wing variant that squelches discussions before they can even get going, we want a social sphere we can talk honestly, work toward common ground, and agree to disagree.

You’re not offering any of that, which helps explain why your man in the White House’s numbers are sinking. Nor are you offering a positive vision of the future. Instead, you’re merely standing athwart over Confederate statues, free trade, and economic innovation, and continuing ethnic diversification yelling Stop! Good luck with all that, but when you fail, please remember not to blame anyone but yourselves. For a change.

In California, the raging U.S. cultural battle over Civil War icons has spread to the names of horses.

At the University of Southern California, a student group has declared the equine mascot of the schools Trojans football team to be a symbol of white supremacy.

Why? Because the horse bears a name similar to that of a steed that belonged to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The USC football horse is called Traveler (one L), while Lees horse was known as Traveller (two Ls).

The student groups leader voiced her disapproval of the home team horses name earlier this week, at an on-campus rally to protest last weeks violence in Charlottesville, Va.

Defensive back Adoree Jackson’s touchdown last season is part of the long and storied football tradition at the University of Southern California. (USA Today Sports)

White supremacy hits close to home, Saphia Jackson, co-director of the USC Black Student Assembly,told fellowstudents, in pointing out the similarity in the horses names, student newspaper the Daily Trojan reported.

The Black Student Assembly didnt respond to a Fox News inquiry on whether the group wanted Traveler renamed or removed.

The renewed debate on public symbols of the Confederacy has sparked a discussion at USC on whether the horse mascots name is a coincidence, or possibly a nod to its namers sympathy to the Southern cause.

Naming the USC mascot Traveler started nearly 56 years ago, after a rideron horseback galloped acrossthe Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum field during a Trojans home game. It was supposed to be a one-time stunt, but quickly became a school tradition, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The original rider of Traveler, Richard Saukko, died in 1992 — withoutofficially confirming whether the name Traveler was intended as a homage toLees horse.

His widow, Patricia Saukko, however, denied the accusations, calling the kerfuffleabout the name a hysteria and a political issue.

The problem is this: Maybe three weeks ago it was fine, she told the L.A. Times. So now the flavor of the day is … we all have to be in hysteria….Its more of a political issue. The horse isnt political and neither am I.

Over at USC theyre nonpolitical about their horse, she added. What if their name would be Lee? Would they want to change it? It doesn’t make any difference. …Hes a wonderful horse and a great mascot.

The widow also notedthat the spelling of the name is different — andwhen her husband bought the horse in 1958, the name had already been picked.

A term originally meant to describe behavior that minimises offence, particularly in relation to minorities. Now the term is an overused strawmen misused against many of those against unfair prejudice. Call a racist irrational and get branded a PC pussy. The term has effectively been used to stifle debate and thought about issues. It has reframed those who want fair and equal treatment of people, to people who have a PC agenda. The term does not censor offensive discussion against minorities, but rather censors discussion for positive social change. People get branded as PC pussies instead of raising debate and free thought. Health minister Hakuo Yanagisawa calls women baby making machines. Bob: No way, he can’t say that! Tom: Why not? Stop spreading your politically correct garbage here. Bob: It ain’t nothing to do with political correctness. He has a responsibility to the state and people to make a good example and good policies. This statement shows he has little respect for women as people and it effects how he handles his role as a minister. It also sends the wrong message to the people.

Shintaro Ishihara claims foreigners would riot in the event of an earthquake requiring not the police but the self defense force. Bob: No way! Tom: Well someone had to come out and say the truth. All you political correct guys are pussies! Foreigners come here with their stinking culture and create crime. Bob: It has nothing to do with political correctness. It is both wrong, as foreigner in Japan have lower crime rates, and harmful, as it incites irrational xenophobic fear.

In France a local soup kitchen for the homeless only has pork dishes, while having many Muslim patrons. Bob: Man that sucks they should try some non-pork dishes too so that Muslims can also eat (Muslims can’t eat pork on religous grounds). Tom: Damn pussy! Stop trying to be a politically correct idiot. Bob: What! It has nothing to do with politcal correctness. I simply want the soup kitchen to help as many people as possible. If non-pork dishes help in that sense they should do that. Particularly if it is supported by government tax breaks.

“Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s as part of its demolition of American liberalism….What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism – by levelling the charge of political correctness against its exponents – they could discredit the whole political project.” – Will Hutton

Pauline Hanson, an anti-immigration campaigner, shocked Parliament when she wore the burka into the chamber, to try to urge the attorney-general to ban the Islamic garment.

After receiving worldwide condemnation,Sky News host Tom Macleod clashed with the Australian MP as he demanded statistics following Ms Hansons claims.

Ms Hanson argued that political correctness in Australia would be to the countries detriment if the burka was not banned.

She said: It has been banned in a lot of countries in the world and actually a lot of them are Muslim countries. Malaysia, Tunisia, Egypt, Congo to name some.

SKYNEWSEPA

No, Australia hasnt banned it yet because we are politically correct here which is going to be to our detriment.

We are so far behind the rest of the world. They actually have the burka there and now [in Australia] and theyrealisethe impact it is having on their culture and their way of life and we need to address it now before our population of Muslims in this country grows to a stance that we cannot address.

I think this is very important. This is Australia, the burka is not Australian.

This is not the culture that we want here its not the culture of wearing the burka and hiding your face.

Its oppression of women, its control of women by a political ideology which is incompatible with our culture and way of life.

The Australian MP continued with her rant before she claimed that England hasitsown problems.

Australia hasnt banned it yet because we are politically correct here which is going to be to our detriment

Pauline Hanson

MsHanson claimed a lot of English people hhadve left the country and migrated to Australia becausethe UK has not banned the burka.

The Sky News host stepped in demanding facts from the Australian MP as he cut her off.

He snapped: You have no statistics. Whereareyour statistics?

Where is the evidence on that? Give me a number of people that have left England because of the burka.

The Australian politician angrily argued back.

She said: I am speaking. As a Member ofParliament, I have traveled my country quite extensively and I am talking to people. People are now saying, if this happens in Australia where will we go next.”

It had already been widely reported that President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, was among the very few top officials around Trump who quietly cheered as he resisted pressure to unequivocally lay the blame for the deadly violence in Charlottesville on Nazis and white supremacists.

But now Bannon has gone public with this view, in a pair of new interviews. Indeed, he has gone even further: In a striking admission, Bannon confirmed that he views the racial strife and turmoil unleashed by Charlottesville as a political winner for Trump.

In the first interview, with The New York Times, Bannon explicitly defended the portion of Trump’s comments in which he seemed to defend the rallying white supremacists’ opposition to the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Trump asked rhetorically whether this would ultimately lead to the removal of statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Here’s Bannon:

“Bannon . . . said in an interview that if Democrats want to fight over Confederate monuments and attack Mr. Trump as a bigot, that was a fight the president would win.

” ‘President Trump, by asking, ‘Where does this all end’ – Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln – connects with the American people about their history, culture and traditions,’ he said.

“The race-identity politics of the left wants to say it’s all racist,” Bannon added. “Just give me more. Tear down more statues. Say the revolution is coming. I can’t get enough of it.”

In the second interview, with the American Prospect, Bannon (believing himself to be off the record) elaborated a bit more on this general theme:

“The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

Remarkably, Bannon is gleefully discussing the political dividends that (he believes) Trump will reap from the fraught aftermath of racial violence that led to the burial of a young woman who was murdered for showing up to protest racism and white supremacy. In so doing, Bannon endorses the general view, also expressed by Trump, that leftist violence (“tear down more statues”) is partly to blame for the ongoing racial strife, and defends Trump’s drawing of an equivalence between statues honoring Washington and Jefferson on the one hand, and those honoring the leading lights of the Confederacy on the other.

On Thursday morning, Trump doubled down on this view in a seriesoftweets, calling efforts to remove Confederate statues and monuments “foolish”:

“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can’t change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also. . .the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!”

Numerous historians have already pointed out the many problems with this equivalence. While Washington and Jefferson were indeed slave owners, they helped create the nation, while Confederate leaders sought to secede from it in order to set up a separate nation perpetuating slavery. Others have noted that the whole point of many of these Confederate monuments was to celebrate white supremacy during the Jim Crow era.

Indeed, since Bannon brought Abraham Lincoln into the discussion, let’s recall that Lincoln famously hailed Jefferson by saying that his authorship of the Declaration of Independence (“all men are created equal”) had given voice to “an abstract truth” that would counter “tyranny and oppression” in all future times, including in the struggle to uproot and destroy slavery. Contra Bannon, Trump’s absurd conflation does not “connect” us with our history; it obscures it.

Ultimately, though, what is really significant here is Bannon’s frank admission that he believes the current ongoing turmoil benefits Trump. To be sure, a more cynical, self-interested motive may be at work. As The New York Times reports:

“Mr. Bannon, whose future in the White House remains uncertain, has been encouraging Mr. Trump to remain defiant. Two White House officials who have been trying to moderate the president’s position suggested that Mr. Bannon was using the crisis as a way to get back in the good graces of the president, who has soured on Mr. Bannon’s internal machinations and reputation for leaking stories about West Wing rivals to conservative news media outlets.”

There is ample evidence that this may indeed help Bannon’s standing with Trump. The Post reports that Trump – like Bannon – also believes his remarks reiterating that “both sides” are to blame for the Charlottesville violence will boost him politically:

“Trump felt vindicated after the remarks, said people familiar with his thinking. He believes that his base agrees with his assertion that both sides are guilty of violence and that the nation risks sliding into a cauldron of political correctness.”

With the special counsel’s probe closing in, and with his numbers sliding deeper into the danger zone, Trump plainly believes that valiantly defying the forces of political correctness (meaning, the forces that want him to unequivocally condemn racism and white supremacy) will rally his supporters to his side. Bannon is clearly feeding that instinct, at least partly to shore up his own standing with the president. Neither, naturally, recognizes any obligations or duties on the president’s part to try to calm the antagonisms that are being unleashed, and neither appears even slightly concerned about the damage they could do to the country, at a time when experts are warning that this sort of rhetoric could cause an escalation in white supremacist activity.

Indeed, as Trump’s new tweetstorm in defense of Confederate monuments confirms, he appears determined to keep feeding these antagonisms. And new polling explains why.